China’s incremental AI computing capacity accelerated in the third quarter of 2026, but chip supply continued to constrain customer onboarding for some operators. Goldman Sachs sees potential returns from integrated computing platforms, while lowering industry target prices amid concerns about financing, returns and valuation contraction.
The project pipeline grew 7% month over month in October, with capacity under construction rising to 87.2GW; but shelved capacity increased by 9.4GW in a single month, as political restrictions and project approvals affect the conversion of projects into construction.
Approvals for large electricity loads in Texas have already been paused, and the election results have further raised market concerns about a slowdown in data center construction. Cloud providers, chipmakers and neocloud companies diverged in early trading. AMD and Arista earnings also showed that demand remains strong, but profits and cash flow face constraints.
Goldman Sachs has raised its forecast for global data center capacity in 2030 from 217GW to 273GW, mainly reflecting estimates of unannounced projects further into the future; power supply, permitting and financing costs affect the pace of project delivery.
Bernstein estimates that 244 gigawatts of data center projects are exposed to political risk, based on gubernatorial candidates’ probabilities of winning, little changed from last month. The firm believes local economic interests could shift the policy focus toward requiring developers to bear more of the cost of electricity infrastructure.
SemiAnalysis expects more than 50 GW of new data center capacity worldwide in 2027, but most projects underlying the forecast of 62.2 GW in net additions in the US in 2028 have yet to begin construction. The duration of the Texas permitting freeze is the largest single risk to the pace of delivery.
Interviews with legal experts by Bernstein show that data center deal activity remains strong, but power delivery timelines, tenant termination rights and credit guarantees together determine project financeability and risk allocation.
The forecast for U.S. data center demand has risen from 97GW to 116GW. Even after accounting for on-site generation and the shift of demand to Asia-Pacific, Morgan Stanley expects a power shortfall for roughly one-third of demand; labor, grid access and rack power consumption are key variables.
BofA expects global data center spending to approach 1 trillion dollars in 2026, with servers, networking and storage accounting for the bulk; demand for grid connections, power distribution and cooling is flowing through to equipment and service providers.
Nomura has raised its forecast for new global data center deployments in 2027 from 32 gigawatts to 40 gigawatts and expects supply chain shortages to persist through 2027. At the same time, rising debt financing costs, project execution risks and limited visibility into 2028 demand constrain the optimistic view.
Runze Technology delivered a record amount of computing-center capacity in a single quarter, EVE Energy’s fourth-quarter capacity is fully booked, and orders are growing at ProPharma and Asymchem. Demand is moving toward delivery, but equipment billing, capacity deployment and product validation each have their own timing requirements.
Four industry reports show different paths to earnings realization: IDC demand is ahead of revenue, shrinking acetic acid supply is driving a profit recovery, oil tanker spot rates have fallen while time charters remain firm, and faster UHV approvals are raising expectations for tenders.
BofA raised its forecast for global data center capital expenditure in 2028 by 122% from its previous estimate, to about 2.1 trillion dollars. Equipment suppliers have opportunities from both market expansion and high-voltage direct current, separate liquid-cooling loops and factory prefabrication; however, the technology transition will replace some legacy equipment, and liquid-cooling deployment is also lagging investor expectations.
